


Con Etiquette

by frankiesin



Series: discontinued works [29]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cosplay, Conventions, Cosplay, Fandom Culture, M/M, YouTuber Remus Lupin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 10:15:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20964884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankiesin/pseuds/frankiesin
Summary: Sirius Black is a fic writer, and Remus Lupin is a famous cosplayer. It gets gay.





	Con Etiquette

**Author's Note:**

> So I don't write for HP any more (I did for like... three months before yeeting myself into anime), but I found this in my Google Docs files while searching for something else and figured I'd post it. It's based off of me actually meeting one of my favourite cosplay groups, and being a mega gay while doing so because I'm a bisexual disaster.
> 
> If anyone is inspired by this AU feel free to continue it because I don't think I will.

The pros of being in a small fandom: if you made something and tagged your faves, they would probably see it  _ and  _ respond or retweet it. 

The cons of being in a small fandom: being horny on main had dire consequences. 

Sirius Black, known online as mssrpadfoot since 2009, was learning these pros and cons on a near daily basis now. He’d been writing for bandom for almost three years, and while he had no interest in leaving (the 2000 people who followed his tumblr blog would be disappointed), he’d recently found himself a new obsession. Marauder Industries, a YouTube channel with around fifty-thousand subscribers, were a group of four cosplayers who’d been making skits and CMVs for about four years now. 

Sirius had discovered them over New Years, when he’d been home from university and bored out of his mind. Regulus was cooped up in his own room, and both brothers were actively avoiding their parents, the way they always did when they had to come home. Sirius had been scrolling through YouTube, on a nostalgia trip to his days in the Marvel fandom, and stumbled upon an Avengers skit by the Marauders. It was hilarious, and really well-produced. Sirius subscribed almost instantly, without even bothering to check what else they did. He didn’t care. He was pretty sure he’d watch them even if they were doing Twilight. 

Sirius did not like Twilight. He’d tried reading it, back in 2009, and had hated it so much that he wrote an alternate ending where Bella and Alice kicked Edward’s stupid, sparkling vampire ass and then ran off to Canada and got married. Sirius couldn’t remember why he’d had them move to Canada, other than the need to get the two girls somewhere far away from Forks, Washington. 

Ten years later, Sirius was well known for his fanfiction in both Bandom and Marvel, and he wasn’t sure how it had happened. One minute he’d been writing shitty fics with incorrect anatomy, and the next moment people were drawing him fanart and making memes of his AUs. He was what the writers of the 2000s called a BNF, but it never went to his head. Regulus didn’t let it, because Regulus reminded Sirius that he was famous for writing about comic book characters and emo band members banging. 

Regulus knew about Marauder Industries, too. Sirius had sent Regulus one of their videos (the pilot episode for a modern Star Wars coffeeshop AU), and dragged him into the chaos as well. He hadn’t mentioned his huge and unnecessary crush on one of the members, though. Regulus teased Sirius about his fandom antics enough as it was. Having a celebrity crush would only make things worse.

The crush was on Remus, who had been in a different cosplay group before the Marauders had come together. Sirius didn’t know too much about that group, because they’d mostly focused on video game characters, and the only game Sirius played was the Sims. Regulus was the gamer girl of the two of them, but he didn’t know anything about cosplay and so he wasn’t helpful when it came to uncovering Remus’ mysterious past. 

The other three members were James, Pete, and Lily, and the three of them had known Remus before the channel started. There was a guy named Sev in some of the earlier videos, but he had disappeared from the group sometime in 2016 and Remus had replaced him not long after. Sirius didn’t give a shit about Sev, because Sev didn’t have the same charming smile and glorious acting abilities that Remus did. 

Remus was gorgeous in or out of cosplay, but unfortunately (for Sirius), he was a relatively private person and didn’t have any kind of social media where Sirius could look at his face. Sirius only had the out of cosplay Q&As to go off of, and Remus looked wonderful in all of those. 

Remus not being on social media meant that Sirius could talk about him on his twitter and not worry about anyone asking about him. His twitter was reserved for his fandom friends only. Not even Regulus was on Sirius’ twitter, although Sirius was pretty sure that that had been Regulus’ personal choice. Twitter was where Sirius could be horny on main and rant about shit without people commenting about it. It was great.

The Marauders had a twitter, and Sirius followed it, as well as following James, Lily, and Pete’s personal twitters. He liked keeping up with them, and occasionally would reply to their tweets if he felt it was worth it. 

Sirius had delved into fanart as well, but he was a much better writer than an artist, and so most of his fandom contributions were words instead of pictures. However, the Marauders weren’t big enough to warrant fanfiction (and Sirius wasn’t dense enough to send RPF to the people involved, anyway), and so he’d had to branch out into making art. His art wasn’t great, but he covered that up by making it shitpost-y, and the Marauders seemed to love it. 

He’d had his art retweeted three times now, and he’d only been a fan for a few months. It was exhilarating, knowing that the people who he looked up to were seeing his creations and thought that they were worth acknowledging. He’d never had any of his art retweeted by the Marvel cast, or by any band members. 

Sirius had brought this up to Regulus, and Regulus had started laughing. Sirius frowned. “What. What  _ exactly _ do you find amusing about my faves loving my shit?”

“Sirius, you’ve got maybe fifty twitter followers,” Regulus said, covering his mouth to stifle his laughter.

“Yeah,” Sirius said. “It’s on purpose. Tumblr is where I go for fandom validation, and twitter is where I go to shitpost and not have people destroy me for having opinions.”

“Which means that, if they wanted to, the Marauders could scroll through your twitter and see that you want Sebastian Stan to raw you,” Regulus said, with the air of someone who had seen that tweet first hand and wished he was Jared, 19, who didn’t know how to read. He turned around in his fancy gaming desk chair and leaned forward on his elbows. “Guess that’s a drawback to being in a small fandom.”

“Oh shit,”Sirius said. “I didn’t think about that.”

“Good thing you have me to do the thinking for you,” Regulus said. 

“Fuck off,” Sirius said, with no malice to be found in his voice.

Regulus smiled back at his older brother and then turned his chair around. He was right, and now Sirius was worried. He’d been using his twitter to post about whatever he wanted, including his crush on Remus. Sure, he rarely interacted with the other members of the Marauders, but… what if they’d seen him talking about how he was gay for Remus? What if they thought he was a weird fan now?

Sirius dropped down in front of his laptop and it bounced on his mattress. “Shit.”

He ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back from his face and staring down at his laptop. “Shit.  _ Shit _ .”

Sirius had never told Regulus about this, but he’d had a few shitty interactions with other bandom people. One had sent Sirius NSFW fanart from one of his fics, and while Sirius hadn’t had an issue with the fanart (he was on  _ tumblr _ , for fucks sake; he’d seen his fair share of dicks), he had had an issue with what followed. It was… it was a lot of NSFW fanart, and headcanons, and the person was very invested in Sirius’ prefered sex positions. They said it was for fanart purposes, but it didn’t take long for Sirius to realise that this person had also gone though his selfie tag and reblogged a bunch of them. 

Sirius blocked that person. He also blocked the guy he’d dated online for a few months, but that was because the guy had started spreading shit about how Sirius was manipulative and only cared about people who read his fics and not anyone else in bandom. 

Between those two things, Sirius had lost his interest in bandom, and had retreated back to familiar Marvel territory. He’d only been there for a few months, and had only posted one short fic through Bucky’s POV, but he was hoping to stay there and avoid the remnants of bandom. 

That being said, he didn’t want to be a sour taste in the Marauders’ mouths, much like how his final few months in bandom had been for him. He didn’t know if he’d ever meet them, but if he did, he wanted them to like him. Or, at least, he wanted them to not regret their decision to hang out with fans. 

Sirius opened his laptop and pulled up his twitter. He considered making it private, because then the Marauders couldn’t find him. That wouldn’t work, though, if he wanted to be able to respond to their tweets and post shit for them to see. He chewed at his bottom lip. “Shit. Do I make a  _ second _ twitter?”

Sirius shook his head. “No, that’s stupid. I’ll just censor them.”

He clicked on the button to make a new tweet, and typed out  _ after much consideration, all horny on main posts will be made like tumblr vague posts. so. i want r*mus from m*raud*r ind*str*es to raw me in his luke skywalker costume. there. i said it. _

Sirius sent the tweet. There. Problem solved. 

* * *

Sirius stared at his phone. He sent the post to Regulus and then screenshot it to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. 

About a minute later, there was a knock on his dorm room door. Sirius left his phone on the bed and walked over, opening it to see none other than his brother on the other side. He was glad that the two of them had ended up in the same dorm hall, even though they were on different floors. It made school easier, knowing that they were less than a minute away from each other. 

It also meant that Regulus could physically pinch Sirius during the school year, if needed. 

Regulus did so, Sirius yelped, and Regulus slipped under his brother’s arm while rolling his eyes. He sat down at Sirius’ desk and crossed his arms over his chest. “I saw what you sent me.”

“I can’t believe you stopped playing Minecraft long enough to come assault me,” Sirius said. 

Regulus rolled his eyes again. Sirius wondered if he ever got migraines from doing that too much. “You asked me to pinch you, asshole. And I wasn’t playing Minecraft.”

“Whatever,” Sirius said. He launched himself back onto his bed and flopped onto his stomach gracefully. “You know what this means, right?”

“You’re going to drag me to London, aren’t you?” 

“Yes.”

“...do I have to wear a costume?” Regulus asked. 

Sirius looked up at him, gauging his expression. He looked mildly irritated, which meant that Sirius had a chance of getting his brother to cosplay with him. Sirius grinned. “Oh, absolutely. I can’t go to a Marauders panel and have you looking like some  _ normie _ , now can I?”

Regulus stared at Sirius for a very long time that actually turned out to be about fifteen seconds. He shook his head. “Don’t call me that.”

“What else am I supposed to call you?” Sirius said. “It’s a  _ con _ . You’ll look weird if you’re out of cosplay.”

The truth, of course, was that Sirius hadn’t done any real cosplaying himself in about four years. When he and Regulus had been kids, they’d gone to a few local conventions, dressed up as cheap, mid-2000s cosplay versions of Homestuck characters. Sirius had gotten into Marvel after that, and then moved to bandom, and by that point, he’d gotten too old and too busy to really get into cosplaying. He was spending all of his spare money on concerts and midnight showings and comics, and on top of that, he’d lost track of what most people dressed up for at cons. 

Sirius had a horrible feeling that, no matter what he and Regulus chose to dress up as, they’d look out of date in the audience. At least, if they were both doing it, they’d look out of date on purpose. If it was just Sirius in costume, he’d feel out of place. Sirius liked having attention on himself, but he wasn’t going to do it at the cost of his own dignity. 

“What do you want me to cosplay?” Regulus asked. 

Sirius lit up. That was surprisingly easy. “What do you wanna do?”

“Well, we’re into a lot of different stuff, so I don’t know if there’s any fandom out there where we’d both know what was going on,” Regulus said. He had a point. He uncrossed his arms. “But, I know you, and I know you’re only going to meet these guys--”

“You don’t know that, I could be going because I miss con culture,” Sirius said.

“--so we should pick a fandom that they’d recognise,” Regulus continued, not acknowledging Sirius’ interruption. Sirius loved his brother, especially in times like this. While Sirius was all about big ideas and dramatic decisions, Regulus was the one who knew how to throw some logic into the mix. When they were younger, Sirius had been annoyed, thinking that Regulus was a killjoy (and not the fun, My Chemical Romance inspired type). As they’d gotten older, however, he’d been greatful for his younger brother’s tendency to plan first, act later. It had kept Sirius from getting kicked out a few times, and saved both brothers a lot of stress.

Sirius nodded. “Good plan. Right now, they’ve been tweeting a lot about Les Mis and the new Umbrella Academy series on Netflix. That’d be a good place to start, wouldn’t it?”

“Isn’t the Umbrella Academy that weird comic you read a few years ago?” Regulus asked. “The one with the siblings and the violin lady?”

“Yeah, it’s by Gerard Way.”

“The emo man?” Regulus’ face twisted up in confusion. “When did he write comics?”

“He went to school for it,” Sirius rolled his eyes. “I’ve told you all this. Do you not pay attention to me or something?”

“Sirius, name one time where I’ve paid attention to you.”

Sirius frowned. “Fair point. So. Umbrella Academy?”

“I’ll have to watch it first,” Regulus said, “but sure. We can dress up as the My Chemical Romance inspired superheroes.”

Sirius grinned. He loved his brother, really. And he had a feeling he knew who Regulus would get to cosplay as. He’d already started watching the series (James had posted a Klaus Hargreeves costest on his instagram last week and that had been enough convincing for Sirius), and he liked it already. He figured he’d do Klaus, as he was also a gay disaster of a human being, and he could probably get Regulus to go as Ben. Or, if not Ben, then Five. Regulus was snarky enough to be Five. 

Regulus narrowed his eyes. “You’re plotting, aren’t you?”

“When am I not?” Sirius said, grinning. “It’s the creative spirit, Reg. It fuels me.”

“I thought the gay fuelled you.”

“That too,” Sirius said. He waved his hand at his brother. “Now get out of my room. I have impulse buys to make, and you have a Netflix series to binge. The con’s in a month. We gotta catch up, quick.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, feel free to leave a comment or kudos!


End file.
